Fans and initiates will be highly entertained.

    Summer Moonshine involves Sir Buckstone Abbott trying to sell what is probably the ugliest home in England, as well as a complicated love quadrangle.

    Over the next two years the magazine ran all 15 of the original stories that were eventually published in 1937 as The Education of Hyman Kaplan.

    These had to be sorted carefully because he had a habit of writing on whatever scrap of paper was handy--backs of envelopes, tax memoranda, or small pads of paper which he could hold in his hands on days when they were too lame for the big ones. We talked daily about his father and mother and I knew perfectly the material he had in mind to use. Then I found, as I read and sorted the manuscripts, not only had he told it to me, but that he had written it down. Clarence had done all but the last chores involved in preparing a manuscript for a typist. All that remained to be done was the mechanical job of piecing together the incidents so that they could be copied. His work on his father and mother was finished. There was one exception: Mother's last home was so characteristic of her and meant so much to her that, following notes, and copying from Clarence's diary, I inserted a description of her last days. When he was alive Clarence used to speak of what the interest of his friends, his brother George Parmly Day and his wife, and Mr. Knopf and his staff had meant to him. It would not be fair to publish this book without thanking them for their continuing kindness; and also thanking two of his friends especially: Mrs. Alice Duer Miller and Mrs. Katharine S. White, for their ever-ready and helpful criticism.? --Katherine B. Day CONTENTS: Mother Reads My Article to FatherMother and Father MeetFather Visits the WarFather's Methods of CourtshipGrandpa Assists at a S?anceMother Shows Us OffNoble BoysMother Gives Father a SurpriseFather Buys Us a BoatMother on HorsebackMother and Bessie Skinner's RingFather Brightens the SickroomMother Gets an AllowanceFather and Old Mother EarthFather Invests in a LiveryMother and Our Wicked MareFather's Troublesome NeighbourMother Makes a Mustard PlasterMother and Pug Dogs and Rubber TreesMother Plays Her RoleFather's Home DisappearsMother Travels AloneMother and the Servant ProblemMother's Last Home a selection from the first chapter: MOTHER READS MY ARTICLE TO FATHER? There has been some discussion in the Day family, among its members and friends, of the things that I say about Father and Mother. One of their objections is that in several places I haven't been accurate. I have tried to be, but memories are sometimes inexact, and mine is no exception. However, these pieces have been subjected to a great deal of scrutiny, helpful and otherwise, from members of the family who have sometimes remembered things differently. Cousin Julia for instance insists that Mother's musicales occurred in the evening, whereas I have described one as taking place in the late afternoon. I feel sure that in this case I am right, for we used to write each other long letters about family doings and these have given me contemporary accounts of the scenes I've described. Other scenes have come down through the years as family anecdotes. Since I was an actor in most of them they have remained dramatically printed on my mind. Besides, any memories of two such persons as Father and Mother are bound to be vivid. The other family objection is that in printing these stories I have not been decently reticent. My feeling was that these two persons were so utterly themselves, so completely natural and true, that the only good way to tell about them was to paint them just as they were. The first article I printed about them was written one night when I needed an extra paragraph for a column which I was occasionally writing, that year, for the literary supplement of the New York Evening Post.

    A collection of humorous essays, accompanied by the author's own bizarre drawings, presenting Thurber's unremitting retort to the multitude of "self-help" books which were widespread in the 1930s and whose successors are still with us today.

    The chapters are: "Striped Shirts and Busted Hearts" (new)"Mountain Man""Meet Cap'n Kidd" (new)"Guns of the Mountains""A Gent from Bear Creek""The Feud Buster""The Road to Bear Creek""The Scalp Hunter""Cupid from Bear Creek""The Haunted Mountain""Educate or Bust" (new)"War on Bear Creek""When Bear Creek Came to Chawed Ear" (new).

    How many times have you missed the best bits of a Marx Brothers movie, failing to catch Groucho's famous one-liners because you were still laughing at the bit with Harpo and the zipped-up banana? And what about the lemonade stall? The mirror section? And the blue-tined ballet sequence?This book offers what the videos can't, ant that's a short cut to some of the funniest films of all time -- Monkey Business (1931), Duck Soup (1933), and A Day at the Races (1937) -- scripted by some of the wittiest screenwriters Hollywood ever produced.In addition to a generous number of stills from each movie, this bumper edition also includes a cast and production crew list for movie buffs as well as an Introduction by Karl French.

    Ironically, however, a secret act of kindness proves her undoing, causing her manipulations to lead to drastic and untoward results. Ivy Compton-Burnett is a master of the well-chosen phrase and telling juxtaposition. In this, one of the lightest and most comic of her novels, she presents a large cast of vivacious and quick-witted characters who, under the cloak of polite conversation, set about each other with verbal swords.--from the back cover of the Allison & Busby edition, 1984